Ischemic conditions, in particular ischemic heart disease (IHD), represent a leading cause of human death. Data issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014 indicate that about 7.4 million people died due to ischemic heart disease in 2012 which makes IHD to the no. 1 in the list of life-threatening conditions. At present, the approach for curing IHD is to re-perfuse the affected area through Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (GABG) or Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (PCI). However, if reperfusion is delayed, this may exacerbate the myocardial injury known as ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury.
Available medical therapies such as calcium channel blockers most often fail to provide sufficient therapeutic efficacy and may even enhance the risk of heart attacks. Further, the mechanisms of IHD are quite complex. How to increase the effectiveness of the treatment is, thus, of significant importance. Accordingly, there remains a strong need for further treatment options in treating ischemic conditions like IHD in particular for those which are able to protect against hypoxia and reoxygenation induced cell death.
Recently, Traditional Chinese medicine as well as complementary and alternative medicine has getting popular. Traditional Chinese medicines based on plant materials as well as respective components gained from plants usually allow for treatment of various diseases and conditions while bearing a reduced risk for side effects. In view of the rich medicinal plant resources, respective medicines can usually be produced in a cost-effective way. Accordingly, there has been a lot of research with regard to plants and respective ingredients for treatment of several conditions.
Traditional Chinese medicine is usually characterized by multiple components targeting multiple pathways at multiple levels to produce synergistic effects and, thus, might be a valuable treatment option for IHD, too. For example, Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer (ginseng) has been used as a classic traditional Chinese medicine quite for a long time, wherein the whole ginseng extract was assumed to have cardio-protective effects (Zheng, S.-D. et al., Chinese journal of integrative medicine 18, 548-555, 2012). However, it seems that ginsenosides might only partially contribute to said effects (Zhou, H. et al., J Ethnopharmacol 135, 287-298, 2011).
Since diversified components in Chinese herbal medicines often act via multiple modes, there is a strong need for identifying and providing components in a rather isolated form with sufficient therapeutic efficiency, in particular suitable for treatment of ischemic conditions. Having those active ingredients could further reduce the risk of side effects or interactions which might limit the therapeutic use due to the presence of further ingredients with reduced or insufficient efficacy for treating the respective disease.